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Posted by klausa 5 hours ago

Pentagon formally labels Anthropic supply-chain risk(www.wsj.com)
351 points | 232 commentspage 3
cush 3 hours ago|
Is Claude Code's outputted code also part of the supply chain risk?
nineteen999 2 hours ago||
Wonder how long it will take the American public to designate the US Govt a threat to national security, and using AI to assemble their own autonomous civilian defense robots to protect the public from the government-approved population suppression robots.

Right to bare arms and all that etc.

blacksmith_tb 2 hours ago||
A bit ironic then that they're actively using Claude in the current war effort[1].

1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-claude-ai-iran-war-u-...

mentalgear 4 hours ago||
I said it before and I say it again: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent. And to add to this quoting another commentator on the issue: First the Meritocracy goes, then the Freedom goes.
exceptione 4 hours ago||
You can download the manual from kremlin.gov, and I am only half-joking here.
ImPostingOnHN 4 hours ago|||
Investor: "here's a million dollars for a ballroom, it'd be real nice if you cancelled the government's contract with our investment's competitors."

Seems like a great ROI. The loser is Average Joe with a 401(k).

burkaman 2 hours ago||
Actually $25 million, and for him specifically (https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/brockman-openai-top-trum...). They didn't bother trying to pretend it was a non-political donation, who cares? Nobody can stop them.
hungryhobbit 4 hours ago|||
Rational investors live in reality. In reality, a great deal of business conducted throughout the world involves graft; companies accept that, and keep doing business.

It's not a good thing, AT ALL. There's a huge loss of overall productivity when you have corrupt systems (see Russia), which is why modern governments have worked so hard to lower corruption. But Trump ruining all that isn't going to end business ... it's just going to make everyone pay more for everything.

watwut 3 hours ago||
> which is why modern governments have worked so hard to lower corruption

I would argue that they did not. They should have and some were better then others.

But, bulk of financial markets, all of predictionmarkets and crypto, startups and sillicon valley, Musk imperium, Thiel, Murdock, all run on corruption. And to large extend, Trump is the endgame of that.

jcims 4 hours ago|||
Been going on for a long time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

digdugdirk 4 hours ago||
There is a substantial difference between the standard lobbying and greasing the legislative wheels, and what's going on with this current administration.

Even if companies were pretending to play by the rules before, at least they had some need to put in the effort to pretend. When a society can see belligerent ostentatious corruption going on as the norm, nothing good can follow.

JackSlateur 2 hours ago||
At least of the previous couple US election, "people" paid more than a billion dollar each wanna-be president

That is investment aka corruption

bdangubic 4 hours ago|||
That is already started to happen but it cannot happen overnight. Not only is it not easy but finding alternatives is also not easy. Just think of from your own personal perspective, say you have $100m right now invested in US business and wisely you say "I gotta get my shit away from this mess" - where exactly would you park your assets? You will find a way of course but you won't be moving $100m elsewhere overnight
georgemcbay 4 hours ago||
> I said it before and I say it again: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.

Arguably large parts of the market in the US have been irrational and largely vibes based for a long time at this point. This action (like many others coming out of the Trump administration) adds to the chaos but I tend to doubt it will be the event that causes Wile E. Coyote to look down.

idontgetit1988 4 hours ago||
>I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.

You don't see how?

Well, just watch and wait, and you will see that this will have essentially zero effect on US investment.

It's petty and sad, but nothing ever happens.

Who else is even in the conversation? China? They would never do something like this!

parliament32 3 hours ago||
Is there a link to the actual order anywhere? For us FedRAMP folks, the exact order contents actually matter, rather than a journalistic regurgitation. I was hoping one of the links in the article pointed to a source, but they're all just links back to other WSJ pages.
SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago|
It sounds like they still have not issued any sort of actual order. The "formal label" described in the article is that they sent a communication directly to Anthropic saying they're a supply chain risk.
wg0 3 hours ago||
Has this happened before?
jacquesm 3 hours ago||
You can ask that question every other hour.
gAI 3 hours ago||
Not to a US company.
6thbit 3 hours ago||
Does this mean nobody on a large company selling to government can use any Anthropic tool or model?

So that’s most of sp500 and their providers?

6thbit 3 hours ago||
Would this mean Any systems built with Claude in defense environments may need to be rebuilt or removed?
zppln 3 hours ago|
From what I understand it cannot be used to perform work on contracts where the DoW is on the other side. [1]

In practice I would suspect companies with such contracts would play it safe by outright banning the use of Anthtropic products, even if they could technically be used for work on contracts with other parties.

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-comments-secretary-...

eikenberry 3 hours ago||
Could this be the chain of events that finally pops the AI bubble? If OpenAI's reputation hit slows growth enough to scare off investors and Anthropic's growth stalls due to this government attack...
scottyah 2 hours ago|
I think it's a good chance tbh. It would take the S&P down with it too
jawns 4 hours ago|
The consequence is that any company that does business with the U.S. military, and potentially any company that does business with the government in general, must stop using Anthropic's products for that work.

Anthropic has vowed to fight this designation in court.

Without weighing in on the constitutionality or legality of the move, I think it's obvious that this kind of retaliation power is unmatched by any private business that has a contractual dispute.

If a private business doesn't like Anthropic's terms, it can walk away from the deal, but it can't conduct coordinated retaliation with other companies before ending up in antitrust territory or potentially violating the Sherman Act.

Now for my editorializing: The fact that Pete Hegseth is willing to apply this type of designation against a U.S. company simply because he doesn't like its terms is pretty chilling. It's all the more scary once you consider which terms he objects to.

mitthrowaway2 4 hours ago||
Every action has an opposite reaction. The DoD has made itself riskier to do business with, and future contacts will have to price that risk in.
alephnerd 4 hours ago|||
FedRAMP and FedRAMP adjacent revenue is non-negotiable for vast swathes of businesses. The designation of "supply chain risk" is viral in nature because no GRC team will dare take such a risk within their supply chain because most customers add BOM requirements in contracts so this will end up falling under those already.

There's a lot of backchanneling going on between Emil and Dario because everyone's in the same circles but it's all for naught.

hedayet 4 hours ago||||
In Hegseth's voice - No longer politically correct "DoD". It's precisely violent DoW now.
stefan_ 4 hours ago|||
The DoD has been rather consistent that they will decide what to do with a product sold to them, not some random vendor. There is nothing extra to "price in".
nkohari 3 hours ago||
The "extra" is that the government is now attempting to unilaterally renegotiate contracts, and if the contractor disagrees, not only do they terminate the agreement but they restrict how other companies can work with you.
bicx 4 hours ago|||
Apparently that's not 100% true. The DoD contractor itself can still use Anthropic's technology, just not on U.S. military contract projects.
jacquesm 3 hours ago|||
If you were a contractor to DoD (no way I'm calling them DoW) would you take the risk of doing business with a company that has been labeled a supply chain risk by your main customer?
ectospheno 4 hours ago||||
They will stop just to be sure no boundaries are crossed.
alephnerd 4 hours ago|||
The issue is the onus is on the contractor to prove that Anthropic technology has not tainted US government contracted projects - this is a herculean task verging on impossible. Additionally, most contracts will mandate SLAs around removing BOM risks.
AnotherGoodName 4 hours ago||
I’d like a lawyer to give some input. If you have a company that deals with the military does this chain down to not being allowed to use Claude or not?
Imustaskforhelp 4 hours ago||
IANAL and this is my understanding of the situation (I can be completely wrong) but yes, any company that deals with military cant use Claude (anthropic)

In fact adding onto it, IIRC this is the reason why google and amazon have to divest essentially from Anthropic if they want Govt. contracts

Hope this helps though a lawyer's input will definitely be more credible. So its good for them to respond as well.

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